AFTER about four years in the making, embroiled in controversies and a tussle with the censor board, and a change of title, (it was ‘Kadhal Arangam’ earlier), ‘Kadhal Kathai’ finally hits the theaters. Ostensibly about taking a stand against sexual exploitation of women, of treating them with more respect than as mere sex objects, the film contradicts its own stand. For, no Tamil film earlier has depicted women in such a crude, sleazy, titillating manner as this one has done.
The opening scene should have alerted us about what was to follow. A startling shot of a foreign couple in the buff, nonchalantly walking towards the camera. But then you give the benefit of doubt to the makers (Velu Raja, brother of Velu Prabhakaran, the latter scripting the film) that maybe they were attempting a realistic, and hopefully a sensitive depiction of the man-woman-sex factor. But what follows is more of a soft porn trip for the viewer. The camera turning voyeur, caressingly and gloatingly lingers over semi-nude female forms leaving little to the imagination, as they are shown making love, or clinging wet in flimsy sarees. The censors seem to have been lenient here.
Velu Prabhakaran plays himself, a film-maker, who on his trip to hunt for rural locations, chances on some happenings there. And it’s his narration of these to a journalist, that we get to watch in the flashback mode. We get to see lovers separated by brutal caste fanaticism; of a buxom housemaid succumbing to the gentle but manipulative pleas of a sex starved employer, a school master; of a farmhand’s wife in her secret sexual escapades with her husband’s boss in return for material gratification. Most of it consensual sex. And then we get to hear Prabhakaran’s take on not just love (‘its all just lust’ he brushes it off) and female sexual exploitation, but also on atheism, religious superstition, and whatever else he had an opinion on. Velu Prabhakaran is a bold, progressive script writer and filmmaker, who had earlier transformed to screen the issues he felt strongly about. Withthe way he had tackled religious superstition in Kadavul one thought his take on female sexual exploitation would be refreshing and sensitively crafted. But, its all a confused set of issues and incidents that seem just excuses to visually exploit the female form. And that too in the most crude and disgusting way possible.
expresso@epmltd.com